DER Filmmaker

Jean Rouch

The Films Of Jean Rouch: Background

Jean Rouch's prolific film career began in French West Africa, where
he worked as a civil engineer during World War II, supervising road
and bridge construction. Previously, in Paris, he had attended the
lectures of Marcel Mauss and Marcel Griaule. In 1946, traveling down
the Niger River, Rouch shot his first film with a 16mm Bell and Howell
camera, developing an original style after the tripod fell in the
water. Later, he enlisted the help of Damoure, a Sorka friend, to film
a hippopotamus hunt, and thus began a productive collaboration that
has lasted almost four decades. Damoure took sound for Les Maitres Fous, was a central character in Jaguar, and worked with Rouch on many
other films, as did several of Rouch's long-standing African friends
and co-workers.

Rouch's innovative approaches effected more than anthropological film.
In the summer of 1960, Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin shot
Chronique d'Un Ete' (Chronicle of a Summer), a film dealing with
Parisians' thoughts and feelings at the end of the Algerian war. In
Chronique, now considered a pioneering "cinema-verite" film, the
formerly invisible barrier between the "objective" filmmaker and his
subject dissolved. The viewers see the filmmaker approach his subjects
on the boulevards of Paris, inquiring, "Are you happy?" Technically,
Chronique also furthered the development of a more efficient,
portable, synchronous sound system that permitted the filming of
longer, unbroken sequences.

Although Rouch is best known for Chronique, and for the inspiration
that it offered to New Wave filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Goddard and
Francois Truffaut, his most striking contributions to film remain more
than seventy ethnographic films made in West Africa. From the 1940s
until the present, Rouch has produced films in Ghana, Niger, Mali, and
Upper Volta, ranging from straightforward portrayals of extraordinary
ritual events, such as Les Maitres Fous, to "collective
improvisations" such as jaguar, or, more recently, Cocorico! Monsieur
Poulet, based on a Niger folk tale.

In the West, Rouch's distinctive vision of the cultures of West Africa
has influenced students of anthropology, of ritual, and of Africa. But
his influence has been significant on the African continent as well,
where he consistently attempted to introduce film technology and to
train technicians as he worked. Moustapha Alassane and Oumarou Ganda
of Niger, Safi Faye of Senegal, and Desire Ecare of Ivory Coast are
among the contemporary filmmakers who once worked with Rouch.